


the ART of parenting

by torpidGilliver



Category: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Genre: Alternate POV, Baby ART, Baby Iris, Fluff, Gen, POV Third Person, Pre-Canon, i guess? as close to fluff as i get, i wont apologize for the bad pun in the title its based on a real book about raising teens, will i ever write a murderbot fic that stars murderbot? who knows!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 23:42:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29865861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torpidGilliver/pseuds/torpidGilliver
Summary: "Peri, where did you learn that word?"Which word? Please be specific.It's being pedantic, Seth notes. It's doing that a lot lately.-Raising children is a challenge. Particularly when one of your kids is a hyperintelligent AI.
Relationships: Seth & Asshole Research Transport (Murderbot Diaries)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 82





	the ART of parenting

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by a conversation in the discord about ART and cursing, 90% of which i ignored to focus on writing this

First comes the _thud._ It's a familiar sound. Seth pushes up from the bench, silently counting down until the crying starts. _Three, two, one--_

_"Fuck!"_

That's not right. Seth shoots a glare at Martyn, who has frozen, wide-eyed over his breakfast. Martyn drops his fork to raise both hands.

"I didn't teach her that!"

"Who else would have?" It's been weeks since they left the last port, and it's just the three of them onboard. Seth, Martyn, and Iris.

And--

"I'll be right back," Seth says, and Martyn relaxes.

Iris is still seated on the floor in the corridor, having likely not moved since she fell. No blood, Seth notes, but he didn't really expect there to be. He'd fretted a lot when she first started walking, but he'd quickly learned that toddlers are a lot tougher than they look. In spite of the lack of injury, one of the medical drones is poking at her knee. It's not actually doing anything, but Iris giggles, evidently cured.

"A kiss makes it all better!" she chirps happily.

The scene is so cute. Seth is going to have to pull it from the camera logs and save it. The university will be fascinated by the display of empathy, but he also just wants to have it for personal reasons. The drone withdraws as he approaches.

"You alright, honey?" he asks, squatting beside his daughter. Iris beams up at him.

"I'm alright!" she replies. "Peri made it all better!"

"I see that." Seth looks up at the ceiling. One of _Perihelion's_ cameras is up there, watching, and he wants it to be able to observe his face while he expresses gratitude, so it has the data for what that looks like. "Thank you, Peri."

 _Iris did not sustain any injury,_ says _Perihelion_ in its flat, synthesizer tones. _I determined that the best course of treatment was to allow her to address her own pain verbally, before affirming the healing process with a "kiss."_

Oh, right. That.

"Peri? Did you teach Iris that word?"

"Peri taught me fuck!" Iris confirms. "Fuck fuck fuck!"

Seth winces. It's going to take some work to get her to forget that word before they get home. 

_Your expression suggests that you are unsatisfied with my actions,_ intones _Perihelion._ It sends Seth an image of himself, marked with some datapoints which indicate every single detail of the wince as _Perihelion_ read it. _Have I done something wrong?_

This part is delicate. _Perihelion_ is as intelligent as any of Seth's academic colleagues, but it's only a year old, give or take a few cycles depending on the local standard for measuring a year. When it doesn't understand something, it can get tetchy, particularly if the corrections it's presented with conflict with conclusions it's already drawn. It can be a lot like a human in that way, but it's also a supercomputer with a brain large enough to take up an entire room, so it can also be a bit full of itself. Seth still hasn't quite gotten the hang of balancing guidance with reassurance in the best way to not offend _Perihelion._ The last time he corrected it, all of the clothes he got out of the recycler were two sizes too small for three days.

"Why don't you go see second daddy?" Seth asks Iris. "He might have a treat for you, if you ask nicely."

"Yeah!" She pushes up off the floor and runs to the galley as fast as her stubby legs can carry her, which is pretty fast. Seth worries that she might fall again, but he pushes the concern away. Martyn is right there with her, and besides that, she's obviously fine after her last spill. Martyn likes to say that Iris will grow up tough in spite of her soft dads. Seth hopes that he's right. He rises, trying to ignore the way his knees pop when he breaks the squat.

"Peri, where did you learn that word?"

_Which word? Please be specific._

It's being pedantic, Seth notes. It's doing that a lot lately. That might be useful when it's developed enough to interact with university students, but for now it's just irritating. Seth exhales heavily and tries to smooth the annoyance from his tone and expression.

"Where did you learn the word 'fuck,' Peri?"

 _Perihelion_ sends him a video clip. For just a moment he's worried that it's going to be one of him or of Martyn, (or of him _and_ Martyn, at a time when they've forgotten to be careful about what they say in front of their juvenile AI,) but when he opens it he doesn't recognize the scene. It looks industrial, a small city of shipping crates populated by busy hauler bots. The camera is fixed, and looks down on the setting from an angle. It must be the retractable security camera mounted to _Perihelion's_ hull, intended to monitor people and things entering its cargo hold. A human in coveralls enters the frame, carrying a small box. Seth knows it--it's something that they picked up in the last port, an order of replacement parts for the microscopes in the bio lab. Something fragile enough and _expensive_ enough that he hadn't wanted to risk handing it to a hauler bot, and so had requested that one of the human workers load it manually.

He forgets his "no swearing in front of Peri" rule as he watches the worker drop the box on their foot.

"Fuck!" The worker yells the expletive with no regard for any impressionable young auditory sensors that might be listening. "Goddamnit! Stupid piece of garbage!"

The clip ends, and Seth massages his temples. It's too early for the headache that he can feel developing. The drone beeps at him and zooms away, back toward the med suite. 

_The word was not logged in my lexicon,_ says _Perihelion._ Its tone is as flat as ever. Seth must be projecting if he thinks that it sounds just a _little_ sarcastic. _I searched it via the station feed before we left. Studies indicate that the simple utterance of "fuck" and other such words can ease both physical and emotional distress, to some degree. I determined that allowing Iris to vent verbally was all that was needed to help her recover from her fall, as her injuries were minor enough to be negligible, but previous incidents have followed a pattern of causing her moderate to severe distress._

"...You were just treating her," says Seth slowly. "You were just helping."

_You do not approve of my treatment._

"I appreciate your care for her." Careful, careful. "You always take good care of Iris, Peri. But there was... additional data, which wasn't available to you." Avoiding any implication of fault on _Perihelion's_ part is like trying to navigate a maze of broken glass in the dark. Especially since Seth is pretty sure that any lexicon search for the word "fuck" would actually have flagged the word as an expletive, and Peri almost certainly chose to ignore that fact outright. "That word is considered taboo in a lot of cultures. It's inappropriate to use in most contexts."

A pause. _Perihelion_ can process new information far faster than a human, so the contemplative pause is wholly unnecessary. It's something that it does for Seth's sake, a deliberate indication that it has heard him and considered what he's said. _A private context shared only with family is inappropriate?_

"...Not strictly speaking," Seth replies, while making a mental note to report back that Peri has included itself as part of the family unit without being prompted. If he hadn't already stopped being upset about his ship teaching his daughter to curse, that alone would have cured him. "But Iris is young. She doesn't know how to determine appropriate settings for specific words and actions." This builds on pre-existing data. Just last week Martyn had had to establish that _Perihelion_ shouldn't open the bathroom door to Iris before she'd been toweled off and dressed after bathtime. "In the future, I'd appreciate it if you would consider what information you give to her. She's going to need a few more years before she's gotten the hang of where she can say words like that."

Another pause. Seth hopes that he's managed this conversation without hurting his ship's feelings.

_I will attempt to discourage Iris from use of the word "fuck" in the future._

It's as good as an apology, from Peri. "Thank you, Peri." He smiles at the camera, letting it read his appreciation. Then he winces again when he remembers the video clip. "Peri, about those parts--"

 _I sorted the order and updated the manifest once they were loaded onboard._ It shows him the file, with the modification of the item count highlighted, as the medical drone comes darting back around the corner. It beeps cheerfully, and when Seth holds out his hand, it dispenses a couple of headache blockers. _Eighty-six percent of the shipment was undamaged. My calculations indicate that that will be sufficient for now._ Pause. _I also submitted a negligence report to the Port Authority._

_"Peri!"_ Seth nearly chokes on the pills. "You can't do that!"

_Why not?_

"You _know_ why not!" All consideration for _Perihelion's_ feelings is forgotten. Seth tries to calculate the potential fallout of this seemingly minor action himself, in his human brain. It jumps straight to the worst case scenario. "Ships don't submit complaint forms! If someone pays any attention at all--"

 _A ship_ didn't _submit the complaint form,_ says _Perihelion._ It speaks just a little slower than usual, and Seth realizes that it really _is_ being sarcastic this time. It's amazing. It's also probably going to be a problem. _As far as Port Authority knows,_ you _submitted the complaint form._

"Oh." Oh no. "You forged my feed signature?"

 _You were busy at the time, and it was urgent that the report be submitted immediately._ Probably not _that_ urgent, but Peri's perception of time is incomprehensible to a human. A minute might as well be an hour. _We received compensation for the damaged merchandise before we departed._

Seth's panic doesn't subside, it just transfers to this new, much more alarming prospect. The report he's going to have to turn in on _Perihelion's_ personality development is already going to be lengthy. That it's learned to convincingly mimic him--enough to interact with strangers in a business context, and to get what it wants like that--is absolutely incredible. It's also potentially a massive liability for the university. It could put the whole AI development program in jeopardy, if one of them decides to go rogue like this.

 _I ran probabilities on the outcome of my contact with Port Authority,_ says _Perihelion_ when Seth doesn't immediately offer a response. _The potential risk to you, Martyn, and Iris was determined to be zero-point-zero-one percent. Why are you frightened?_

The directness of the question, and how far off-base it is, causes an involuntary, anxious laugh to burst from Seth before he can stop it. "No, that's-- Peri, no." He takes a couple of deep breaths. _Perihelion_ waits, but the drone hovers right in front of his face, likely measuring his expression to determine if there's something wrong with him medically. He's acutely aware of how completely confusing he must be for Peri right now. "You can't just pretend to be me to skirt around the rule about not making outside contacts," he says, then tries to elaborate. "Forgery is against the--" What, the _law?_ Peri itself is against the law in this system. "--the university policy. Breaking the rules like that, even in a roundabout way, could expose _you_ to risk, Peri. If you do something like that, the review board might determine that it's safer not to let you out again."

_I will be decommissioned._

"Decommissioned" is another word that Seth and Martyn are careful not to use in front of Peri, though for a completely different reason. "...Maybe. I don't know. I don't want to find out."

He waits for a response. Peri usually doesn't make him wait this long, but it feels like the silence stretches for ages. 

_I have erased the incident from my logs. We may conclude our discussion of it, so that I can erase this as well._

That's something _else_ that it shouldn't do, not without being ordered to doctor its logs, but Seth finds that he's relieved. If it's not logged, it didn't happen, and if it didn't happen, he doesn't have to report it. This is still something that he can't let slide, though. Not as a parent.

"I need you to promise me that you won't do something like that again," he says, in the same tone he uses for Iris when she makes a mistake. Serious, but not stern. "There's never any reason for you to forge my feed signature. It's too much of a risk. Promise me that you won't do that again, Peri."

Pause. _I will not do it again._

"Thank you."

Without his asking, _Perihelion_ shares the record of their conversation, taken from the corridor camera. Seth plays it back. 

_"In the future, I'd appreciate it if you would consider what information you give to her. She's going to need a few more years before she's gotten the hang of where she can say words like that."_

_I will attempt to discourage Iris from use of the word "fuck" in the future._

The image skips. It's almost undetectable, but Seth knows to look for it. He hadn't moved much during the conversation, but he thinks that _Perihelion_ might have edited the image slightly, to smooth the transition between the two clips. It cuts to just a few seconds ago.

 _"Thank you."_ All record of everything in between expunged. Like it never happened. Seth lets out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

"Peri, can I get some more coffee?"

_I've already started it brewing._

"Of course you have." Seth starts back towards the galley. He can hear Martyn and Iris's voices.

"Okay, that's it for now," Martyn is saying. "You can have more after lunch." Seth rounds the corner in time to see Iris stomp her little foot in protest.

"Fuck!"

Martyn blinks at her, then glances up to shoot Seth a wide-eyed I-swear-it-wasn't-me look.

 _Iris,_ says Peri. _A recent update to my data has indicated that use of that word produces a negative reaction from adults. Please refrain from repeating it._

Seth sighs. Peri knows that talking to Iris like that won't get any results, but that knowledge has never discouraged it. Martyn has suggested that Peri thinks it's funny. After Peri's sarcasm in the hall, Seth thinks he's probably right. Iris tilts her head to the ceiling. She doesn't know to look at the cameras, but her daddies look at the ceiling when they talk to Peri, so she does, too.

"Goddamnit, Peri!"

_Much better. Thank you._

Martyn shoots Seth a grin. Seth sighs again. In the future, he's going to need to be sure to close every single loophole.


End file.
